


New Year’s Eve at the Edge of the World

by nwspaprtaxis



Series: Cold Comforts [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Angst, Assassins & Hitmen, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes-centric, Drug Withdrawal, Drugs, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fever, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt/Comfort, Kindness, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, New Year's Eve, New Year's Kiss, Past Abuse, Past Torture, Platonic Kissing, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Protective Natasha Romanov, Psychological Trauma, References to Drugs, Russian Natasha Romanov, Sick Bucky Barnes, Stitches, Tenderness, Trauma, Vomiting, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 08:59:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17261333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nwspaprtaxis/pseuds/nwspaprtaxis
Summary: On December 31, 1996, two hours before midnight, in Norilsk, fifteen-year-old Natalia Romanova slides through the window of her safehouse and helps a comrade in need.





	New Year’s Eve at the Edge of the World

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** This fic occurs when Natasha is still Natalia Romanova, alias Black Widow, and working for the Russians. Unlike canon, this Nat was born in 1981 (as opposed to ScarJo’s 1984), so she is several years older and, therefore, there is a longer stretch of working as a Russian Assassin between her graduation from the Red Room and her extradition in 1998 by Clint Barton.
> 
> Also, unless otherwise noted, all dialogue is in Russian. I opted neither to rely on Google Translate nor to attempt Cyrillic.
> 
> A big thank-you to **monicawoe** for reading this with zero notice on New Year’s Eve to tell me that this was done and giving me the green light for posting. Also, a million thanks to the best beta ever, **tolakasa** for reading and polishing this up on New Year’s Eve, also with zero notice.

On December 31, 1996, two hours before midnight, in Norilsk, Natalia Romanova slides through the window of her safehouse with silent and liquid movements, her hands burning from the cold iron of the fire escape even through her gloves. Even now, a week and a half later, she still can’t bring herself to use the front door and climb the stairs to her room; the possibility of meeting any of the other tenants makes her feel too obvious, too exposed. _The Black Widow is invisible_ , she hears a mental echo of Madame B say. The heat of the room makes her thighs itch as she turns to shut the window, blocking out the bitter subzero night. Her foot hits something solid and there’s a soft moan.

The sound catapults her across the room, where she hits the switch to the spitting fluorescent overhead light that always takes five minutes to warm to full surgical-theater-brightness, and drops into a fighting stance, left arm thrown up behind her for balance, red ponytail swinging.

There’s a figure, clearly injured and sick, curled up directly beneath her window. He shifts and a metal prosthetic arm flashes in the glowworm-yellow light. Her breath catches. The Winter Soldier. 

Before she can make a move for the knife sheathed in her boot, he groans, huddles even further on himself and she has the distinct impression that she isn’t his mission, that he hasn’t been sent to dispatch her, and that something is very, very wrong with him.

She slowly unbends from her stance, and goes to him, careful to keep her distance. She suddenly feels all of her fifteen years, a mere child standing in front of her trainer. 

“Help me.” The words are English. He flinches, as though to ward off a blow. She knows how he feels. 

She doesn’t say anything and turns on a table lamp. She catches his wince, the way he turns from the light, and shuts off the bright overhead as she goes into the adjacent kitchen, stripping herself of heels, coat, and wrappings. It’s a flat, not a house; a three-room apartment in the rickety part of town, but it’s _hers_ in a way that nothing else is. Of all the places she’d been sent to since graduating the Black Widow program, Norilsk is by far the coldest, especially this time of the year when it dips past twenty below, but the temperatures are a small price to pay for the freedom it offers. She thinks she will be sorry when her mission is over. She hopes that it will be hers for a little while longer. 

She puts some water on to boil, remaining in the doorway and the Soldier’s line of sight as much as possible, for her own benefit as well as his. As the water heats, she goes to him and he doesn’t protest, doesn’t fight when she crouches beside him. Tentatively, she reaches out and he flinches at her contact but doesn’t fight or pull away. She breathes in time with him, slow and careful, and shows splayed hands, palms outwards. A long beat later, she gets him to sit, propping him against the wall behind. When he doesn’t move, she begins unbuckling his armor with nervous fingers, not daring to look at him in the face or make eye contact. When the stiff Kevlar vest is off, she reaches for his shirt and slides it off him. There’s a nasty cut, still bleeding sluggishly, on the biceps of his blue-from-cold flesh arm.

“That needs to be fixed,” she tells him in Russian.

She rises, goes into her small bathroom, gets her first aid kit, and brings it back to where he’s huddled on the sitting room floor. Again, she coaxes him to sit, to lean against the wall beneath the window. It’s then she gets a good look at his face; it’s haggard and drawn, deep gray shadows beneath fever-glittering eyes. She breathes in time with him, not taking her eyes off his. They watch each other, assessing, for a long moment. Finally, he breaks their connection by closing his eyes and hanging his head, dark, greasy chin-length hair falling limply into his face. Submission. She takes a shuddering breath. This is not how it’s supposed to be. She hastily looks down and threads the needle. Turning to the gash on his arm, she pinches together the ragged edges of feverish flesh, and begins to sew. Her stitches are neat, tiny, snug but not too tight, and when she ties off the last one, snipping off the needle and remaining thread, she can tell it won’t leave a scar. In time, no one will be the wiser. 

She helps him to stand, supports his weight. His metal arm is far heavier than she anticipated — she guesses it must be at least eighteen, maybe even closer to twenty-two, kilograms — but still she tucks herself beneath it, pressing against his side like a crutch as they hobble to her bed. Fortunately, it is full-sized and he stretches out on the comforter with a relieved exhale before curling onto his left side, tucking in as small as he can possibly make himself. He reeks of sweat and sick. 

She goes to turn on the light. “Don’t,” he says in Russian. His voice is hoarse and there’s an undertone of an American accent that she doesn’t remember him having when he was her trainer in the Red Room years ago. When she goes to him, she sees his eyes are screwed tightly shut and he’s sweating. She reaches out to… to… to do what? Stroke his hair? Cup his face, maybe? She isn’t really sure, but before she can make contact, he flinches, jerking away with a groan.

She holds up her hands. “I won’t touch,” she tells him. A pause. “What happened? Why are you here?”

He doesn’t answer, burrows his face deeper into the pillows. She’s pretty sure she sees a shudder shiver through his frame. She covers him with a spare blanket.

She crouches beside the bed. “Mission report.” Her voice is steady, dry and sharp, the way Madame B would’ve demanded of her. Will demand of her once her own mission is completed.

The order works. He stiffens, half-turns his face toward her, but doesn’t make eye contact or raise the left side of his face from the pillow, peering up at her with one eye to gauge her reaction. She wonders if his head aches and whether she should offer him something for it. “Mission incomplete. Failed to neutralize target.” His voice is flat, impassive. 

“Status report,” she presses on. A word emerges from the recesses of memory. “Asset?” The word comes out less an order and more a question. She hates herself for betraying her youth, her inexperience. She is not the Black Widow for nothing.

“Asset has been compromised,” he answers dully, all trace of accent gone from his Russian, and doesn’t elaborate. 

Eventually, haltingly, too sick to care if she’s friend or foe, he reveals that it’s the drugs they’ve given him — whether it was too much or too little or just a bad batch remains to be seen, and in the grand scheme, it doesn’t really matter, does it? — and she knows there’s little to be done but give him the space and time to sleep it off the way he requests. “Give me an hour, maybe two. I’ll be fine.” 

He pukes, once, and swallows down some tea. The chamomile seems to help. Shivering and sweating, he gives her a name, an address in a town an hour away, and a ranking number. She tells him she’ll be back soon. 

Before she can rise from his bedside to complete his mission, the bells of a nearby church begin to toll. Midnight.

There’s a flash of metal reflecting light and suddenly a viselike grip is clamped around her wrist. She looks down, breath caught somewhere in her throat, and sees that he’s gripped her with metal fingers, clenching hard enough that she can’t move but not so hard to crush bone. He flexes his fingers, as though to be sure, and she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that despite the metal, he has sensation — touch and pressure for sure, maybe even temperature to some degree. 

He drags himself slowly upright and fixes blue eyes on her. They are clear of fever and drugs, and there is something nakedly, unexpectedly human in their depths. It makes her swallow. “What have they done to you?” she whispers, feeling something she supposes must approach horror as he releases her wrist. He reaches out and cups her face between his palms; one heated flesh, the other cool metal. After a moment, neither of them daring to move, he presses his lips to hers, careful and chaste as though he’s forgotten how or wasn’t sure if he would be allowed. Pulling away, he rests his still-warm forehead against hers, catching his breath. Then, in raspy, whispered English: “Happy New Year, Natalia Romanova.” He pauses, then switches back to Russian, “get out of this life while you still can.”

She doesn’t say anything, eases him back down to the bed and straightens the blanket covering him, not wanting to show how rattled his words have made her. “I will be back soon,” she repeats.

 

* * *

 

On January 1, 1997, three hours past midnight, in Norilsk, Natalia Romanova locks herself into her apartment for the second time that night, carrying her heels in one hand, not minding the wet, frozen slush that soaks her feet or the long, ladder-like runs stretching from heel to thigh in her woolen tights, relishing the satisfaction of a completed mission. It had been far easier than she’d anticipated and it surprised her how neat it was. She’d expected more of a challenge for the greatest assassin of the former USSR.

She senses that she is alone. 

A sweep of the apartment reveals that the Winter Soldier has left. His used mug is on the drainboard. The blanket she’d covered him with is neatly folded on the foot of the bed. 

She fills the teakettle with water, waits for it to boil, and makes herself a mug of chamomile tea. She carries it to the window, where she stands staring out past the fire escape at the darkness beyond, blanket wrapped around her shoulders. For a moment, she regrets using a silenced gun on his target, for dispatching the Soldier’s mission so cleanly in her haste to get back to him.

She hopes that he’s all right, wherever he is.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments stress me out, but I adore kudos!


End file.
